Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Woodley and Lord Balfe

Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, there is not a lot of competition on these Benches to speak, so I hope I shall be forgiven. We normally begin by making a declaration of interest. Mine is quite simple: I left school at 16 and I joined a trade union straight away. I have been in a TUC trade union ever since, and I am currently the president of BALPA, the pilots’ union. I have been the president of the British Dietetic Association. From being a branch official at the age of 16, I have in some way or other been an active trade unionist for longer than I have been an active politician.

I say that because I just cannot see the purpose of the regulations. They deal with an Act passed by a Conservative Government, the Employment Agencies Act 1973. They do not appear to have had the requisite consultation. I would not be surprised if, at judicial review, they did not manage to stand up. There could be a judicial review that the Government had not fulfilled what the regulations were meant to do. I have had briefings from UNISON, the TUC and the British Medical Association. When you get those three in one pot, you really have trouble, I will tell you—with the BMA, particularly.

My first question for the Minister is this. What has changed since 2015, other than that we have a different Prime Minister and that Prime Minister’s trade union envoy no longer seems to have much resonance around the Conservative Party? In 2015, this was dropped; it was not proceeded with. We have the impact assessment and the report of the scrutiny committee. I should like to read just a little into the record. The fact that the impact assessment of the department was

“unable to ‘robustly estimate the size’ of the policy’s impact because of a lack of evidence raises questions as to the effectiveness of the change proposed by the draft Regulations … The lack of robust evidence and the expected limited net benefit raise questions as to the practical effectiveness and benefit of the proposed”

repeal of Regulation 7. That is fairly clear; there is not much room for disagreement there.

I also ask a question about the Liability of Trade Unions in Proceedings in Tort (Increase of Limits in Damages) Order. When was the last case? It is fine to update it, but when I asked someone, they could not find anything in the past 10 years in the way of a case. My experience of attending TU governing bodies is that they spend a hell of a long time looking at complying with the law. If you were to be privileged to sit in on a BALPA meeting, you would find that before even the mildest industrial action is undertaken there is absolutely rigorous scrutiny of whether it fully complies with the law—there is no attempt to get round it. What are HMG trying to achieve, other than to annoy people? I do not think this legislation is draconian; I think it is pretty useless.

Where will you find signalmen to be recruited by, I do not know, Reed, to send them down to Cambridge station to work the signals? I do not think they are there. You will find plenty of doctors. Indeed, one of Addenbrooke’s biggest problems is that the doctors prefer to work through an agency because they get more money. Will you have the doctors all working for the agency? Of course not. The fact is that there is no great skill pool on the railways. If you go to my local station in Cambridge, you will see that there are signs in all the shop windows for baristas and people to work in the shops. There is no unemployment there to be mopped up by such people, even if they wanted to do it.

The average working person gets no pleasure out of crossing picket lines; it is not a natural thing to do. So I ask the Minister: does he really need this? What does he achieve? One-third of trade unionists vote for the Conservative Party. Why go around sticking unnecessary pins into them? We do not have a crisis. We do not have a major problem. We have a minor problem, and even that minor problem needs addressing in negotiation between the railway unions and the people who run the railways. There is a lot that could be improved there, but it is not going to be improved—sorry, Minister—by little bits of legislation such as this. This, I am afraid, is nearer to a dead letter than a live proposition.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, the critique by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, was absolutely stunning. Last month, the Minister told this House that it was “outdated” to talk about workers and bosses because apparently:

“We are all working together for the good of the country.”—[Official Report, 29/6/22; col. 645.]


I say to the Minister: go and tell that to the 3.6 million kids in poverty. Go tell it to them.

The Minister even claimed that the trade unions were a “minority profession”, which “do not represent anybody”. So I ask him again whether this is now the Government’s official position: that 6 million trade unionists do not count. Is this the justification for hobbling trade unions which are fighting for better pay to offset rampant inflation? We are still waiting for the mythical employment Bill—much talked about, but never seen. I remember the Government’s crocodile tears at P&O’s use of agency staff to undermine trade union rights and drive down pay and conditions, yet here they are now, proposing to enshrine such despicable practices into law. I asked the Minister who has been consulted over these changes, and he replied that there had been no consultation—as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said—since 2015.

My noble friend is right. The economy has changed significantly over the past seven years: Brexit, Covid and now the cost of living crisis. It is “wholly inappropriate” to rely on a seven year-old consultation, especially given

“the wider economic and political context”.

Those are not my words but those of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, the REC, which represents agency firms—the employers—and of the TUC, representing trade unions. The REC even warned that these proposals leave employment agencies and their workers in an unfair moral position because of the pressure to break strikes. Let us stop pretending that this Government are on the side of working people, especially when they are slipping through major changes so underhandedly, with only a couple of hours of parliamentary debate.

Surely such a significant shift in workplace power deserves “proper parliamentary scrutiny”? Again, that is not just my opinion, but that of the REC and the TUC, which have both written to our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, as the Minister mentioned, warning against these inflammatory changes being rushed through both Houses. The committee also expressed its concerns with the way the Government have introduced these statutory instruments, especially with their impact assessment—again, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said—which was delivered late and recognised as being of very poor quality, with a “lack of robust evidence”. Surely the Minister can see that these proposals deserve primary legislation, not sneaky SIs.

I ask the Minister: why this all-out war on trade unions, which risks breaching not just international conventions but even domestic law? Will he accept responsibility for poisoning industrial relations across this country as a result? I draw noble Lords’ attention to a contribution from the debate in the other place. The Conservative MP—yes, that is right, the Conservative MP—Alec Shelbrooke said:

“This agency worker measure was not in our manifesto, and it seems to have been done very quickly in reaction to what is going on in the public sector.”


After stating the obvious, that the private sector has

“quite a few unscrupulous employers”—

there is one for the record books—he hit the nail on the head:

“If people lose their ability to have an effect when they withdraw their labour, I am afraid they will effectively lose the ability to withdraw their labour.”—[Official Report, Commons, 11/7/22; col. 93.]